Avatar: Fire And Ash’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Disappoints

InnovationGamingAvatar: Fire And Ash’s Rotten Tomatoes Score DisappointsByPaul Tassi,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.Follow AuthorDec 16, 2025, 10:06am ESTAvatar: Fire and AshDisneyIt is likely to be one of the biggest movies of the year, if not the biggest, given the history of the series, but Avatar: Fire and Ash has arrived with the lowest review score of the trilogy, per Rotten Tomatoes.Here’s how it stacks up in the trilogy, which has reviewed okay, but has never fully bowled over critics:Avatar (2009) – 81% critic score, 82% audience scoreAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) - 76% critic score, 92% audience scoreAvatar: Fire and Ash (2025) – 68% critic score, N/A audience scoreIt’s…fine, but certainly lower than almost all of James Cameron classics including: Titanic, True Lies, The Abyss, Terminator 1 and 2, Alien and Aliens. I believe it’s the lowest of all of them outside of the infamous Piranha II in 1981, with a hilarious 4% critic score. Does this lower score matter for box office returns? Ha, no. The original Avatar made a record $2.9 billion and The Way of Water made $2.3 billion. Fire and Ash may make less than the others, but that’s what, $1.5-2 billion, at least? So yeah, there’s almost no chance this is a failure. Whether more of Cameron’s Avatar features get greenlit remains to be seen, however.Avatar Fire and AshDisneyWhat do critics have a problem with here? This is from Engadget:“Perhaps we've been spoiled by Cameron's last few films, but Avatar: Fire and Ash ultimately feels like more of the same. Even its massive final battle feels like a retread, since it’s set in the same ocean environment as The Way of Water and is once again focused on protecting psychic alien whales from humans.”Of course, there are plenty of positive ones. 70%+, in fact. Here’s Deadline:“With truly dazzling production elements all around this is a movie hard to resist, even if you think you have already seen what wonders Cameron has in store for this franchise. He isn’t committing firmly to the hoped for and scripted 4th and 5th films in the Avatar universe until he sees how this one performs, but my guess is people are gonna go more than once.”So, what’s Cameron doing after this? Working on Avatar 4, assuming that gets greenlit? Actually, he’s co-directing…a Billie Eilish concert film, Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour. That’s a bit random, but it may make at least slightly more sense given that it’s supposed to be a big 3D experience, one of the first of its kind. I would argue that the Avatar movies have been the only 3D films worth seeing in theaters in almost 20 years, so maybe that will be true for Billie Eilish as well (I did see that concert live already). So, now we sit and wait to see just how big Fire and Ash will be, lowest critic scores or not. There’s no doubt it will be a box office tsunami.Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions